I wish Michael Caine had not been cast in this because he is too conventional and limited an actor to portray such an extremely unconventional character. That aside, Brian De Palma’s mash-up of Argento and Hitchcock really made headlines on release. Outraged feminists in the north of England invaded a cinema while it played and threw blood at the screen in protest. That kind of publicity guaranteed more curiosity and meant bigger box office than expected. A master filmmaker manipulated his audience with dark, politically incorrect twists filled with impure thoughts, deeds, guilty pleasures, illicit sex, and its punishing aftermath… [Read more…]

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Heavily drawn from his observations of the 1973 oil crisis’ effects on Australian motorists and the 1975 film, ‘A Boy with his Dog’, director George Miller, with first-time screenwriter James McCausland, created one of Australia’s best known films: Mad Max. The first of several in the series, this movie tells the story of a dystopian future, where the scarcity of oil has begun to cause the collapse of civilization. Law and order are barely holding on within the towns while the highways are controlled by the outlaw gangs. Despite popular belief, the film wasn’t a hit in the USA until later. It wasn’t until 1982’s Mad Max 2 (retitled The Road Warrior in America), that Americans started to love the original film. In the meantime, 1981, horror author Stephen King dismissed Mad Max as a “turkey” in his book, Danse Macabre. [Read more…]

A Hammer imitation from Tony Tensor’s Tigon films, only made on a lower budget and with noticeably less enthusiasm, this is actually a lot more entertaining than it really ought to be. The film is obviously made on a lower budget than Hammer had to play around with at the time and this occasionally shows through, particularly in the creature’s costume. However, a fine British cast do the job and veteran director Vernon Sewell puts in a solid if unremarkable job. The script is literate, the locations good and the movie well-filmed. A load of old mothballs this may be, with too much dialogue, but I had low expectations beforehand. [Read more…]

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I despise motion pictures with no real importance that take themselves too seriously – and this is the pinnacle of that description. If you want to hear Prince’s music, his score for the first “Batman” is infinitely superior. To me, Prince was a brown American David Bowie. (But not as good a songwriter or dynamic a vocalist) Intensely self-conscious and always posing. A bit like a shop mannikin. This is a self-serving, ego-maniacal extended music video. But Prince can’t act while his slutty girlfriend can barely stand up. She is here to convince any doubters that the effeminate-looking Prince is really a hetero who can slap a bitch around. [Read more…]

This is one of those books that will make you shake your head in wonder at how much contemporary fiction is dull, lifeless trash, just because it’s so subtle and hilarious that to admire its virtues is to bring the flaws of others into sharp contrast by implication. The Dog of the South provides a sprawling panoramic view of a particular strain of American culture, with its mix of simple, uncomplicated religious belief and modern economics that seems to winnow the very life and meaning out of the country. The prose style is very artful and the character of the doctor is an American type very reminiscent of the traveling hucksters and other marginal types found in Mark Twain’ or in O’ Tooles “Confederacy of Dunces”. [Read more…]